[Anime] B-Project: Zecchou*Emotion Episode #02 (Anime Review)

I told y’all I’ll write episodic reviews for B-Pro the anime 2: Electric Boogaloo. I’m almost on time with this review, mainly because I can squeeze a little time into this especially with how easily summed up this episode can be.

So let’s take a dive in, shall we?

—Characters

Tomohisa Kitakado (Kitakore)

CV: Daisuke Ono

Ryuji Korekuni (Kitakore)

CV: Daisuke Kishio

✦

Goshi Kaneshiro (THRIVE)

CV: Toshiyuki Toyonaga

Yuta Ashu (THRIVE)

CV: Natsuki Hanae

Kento Aizome (THRIVE)

CV: Kazuki Kato

✦

Kazuna Masunaga (Moons)

CV: Yuto Uemura

Momotaro Onzai (Moons)

CV: Tetsuya Kakihara

Hikaru Osari (Moons)

CV: Showtaro Morikubo

Tatsuhiro Nome (Moons)

CV: Genki Okawa

Mikado Sekimura (Moons)

CV: Toshiki Masuda

✦

Yuduki Teramitsu (Killer King)

CV: Kotaro Nishiyama

Haruhi Teramitsu (Killer King)

CV: Taku Yashiro

Akane Fudo (Killer King)

CV: Shoya Chiba

Miroku Shingari (Killer King)

CV: Takuya Eguchi

✦

Tsubasa Sumisora (A&R Staff)

CV: Asami Seto

Sakutaro Yashamaru (Director of B-Project)

CV: Kosuke Toriumi

Episode 2 “Die Hard” | Air Date: 18th January, 2019 (Japan)

This episode seems to stretch the plot/conflict to pad in the run time but honestly, I didn’t feel frustrated watching it. Though maybe if it was an ep in the middle of the series I’d prolly get ticked off.

In ep 2 we get to see the new unit, Killer King in action, though this episode mainly focuses on the stoic perfectionist Miroku Shingari (who for some reason has the nickname Tono), it does show a bit of the group dynamic of Killer King. The episode starts off with Tsubasa giving Killer King news that they’re doing a collab performance with THRIVE with Kento and Miroku being double centres (Idol talk for who gets to be in the centre during performances, leading every other member in dance routines).

You’re doing great, sweetie.

We then go back to the office Tsubasa works at and overhears that Yashamaru left his desk with all his belongings still there after he quit. Tsubasa takes it upon herself to put all his stuff into a box and looks at the photo of Yashamaru with the B-Pro boys as kids with anguish. I’m guessing she hasn’t told the guys Yashamaru’s true plan with B-Project and she feels bad that she may be the reason why Yashamaru quit. Though this gets me a bit confused as in the first season, Yashamaru wanted the B-Pro guys to travel somewhere on a plan and the guys decided not to with their own accord (for some reason) and just jumped out of the plane and went to Tokyo Dome to perform instead. Sooo, did they know Yashamaru was bad or they just felt like jumping out of a plane for no reason?

Anyway, deus-ex-klutz to the rescue as Tsubasa accidentally drops the photo frame which reveals a second photo was behind the group photo all along. The hidden photo is what looks to be Yashamaru with a girl who has similar features as him (hint: same colour eyes). Tsubasa is like “who is this?” as if she can’t see the resemblance and then the scene just ends. I like that they’re doing little hints throughout each episode on Yashamaru, unlike season 1 where the Yashamaru plot twist just came out of the blue with no foreshadowing whatsoever.

I’m guessing the girl is either Yashamaru’s sister or (worst case scenario) his mom who happens to look really young because anime. Biggest worst case scenario is that she’s his girlfriend lol. This may have some tie in to how Tsubasa’s dad prolly “killed” Yashamaru’s “family” (and the possibility of his family consisting of one person aka his sister would be likely). Raise of hands that his sis prolly used to be an ex-idol and was ruined because of rumors or something that management (possibly Tsubasa’s dad) couldn’t handle and maybe she took her own life because of it, to lessen the blow that Tsubasa’s dad didn’t directly “kill” her? I’m calling it. Prove me wrong, B-Pro.

Anyway the next chunk of the episode is Miroku being told he shouldn’t be centre by the dance instructor (who is prolly voiced by Yusuke Shirai) despite being perfect with the routine. Goshi kinda eggs Miroku on by saying “do you even understand why you were dumped as centre?” after Miroku was like “I do not understand what was wrong, I was perfect”.

The next scenes are just Miroku angsting a bit during dance practice and tries so hard to understand what he did wrong and y’know what, I would be angsting too because absolutely NO ONE gives him a hint or out right says as to why he wasn’t good enough to be centre. Like throw him a bone for goodness sake, don’t y’all see he’s anguishing over it.

Heck even Goshi refuses to tell him despite being a bit annoyed at why Miroku couldn’t figure it out. Like, Kento drops a vague ass hint that he (Kento) makes some mistakes during his dance performance but still turns out all right and then gives a metaphor about how ppl would rather a badly made omelette made with love than a three star meal by a French restaurant and I’m like… huh. Like, I get the meaning but if that badly made omelette tastes bad I’d rather not eat it lol.

Anyway, even after Miroku asked Goshi what he was missing he still refuses to say, which leads into the next scene of the next day where Goshi is being chased by Terminator™ Miroku and ngl, I had a chuckle over how stupid it was. Just tell him Goshi oh my god.

Goshi gives up and gives him advise, though I can’t really remember what he said it was prolly something to do with Kento and his charm. So then Miroku gets home, goes to the nearest entertainment room, closes the curtain (that somehow acts like a door), closes the lights and sits really close to the TV while playing videos focusing on Kento as the rest of the members of Killer King looks on with worry.

I, too, laughed at this part. I dunno why, but a couple of these scenes can be taken as unintentional comedy.

Next day as Haruhi practices being Miroku’s replacement for centre, Miroku comes in to practice with Haruhi and forces himself to smile and wink like Kento. Then all the other Killer King members join in too. It was cute seeing him blush in embarrassment, kinda shows that he’s not a stoic robot lol.

But I guess that wasn’t enough? So Miroku goes back to the park to sulk some more, the kids from before that I hadn’t mentioned stare at him as he sulks and he tries to give them candy but they run away. Tsubasa pops in to comfort him a bit and he asks her what he should do to be charming like Kento, but before she could say anything the kids pop back again and Tsubasa’s like gimme the candy and tries to show him how to approach kids gently with a warm smile. She gives him the chance to try it out and he actually smiles naturally and not forced like trying to impersonate Kento.

Tsubasa never really answered his question but I guess he gets it now? Like he can take a hint from Tsubasa’s actions but he couldn’t take a hint with the other guy’s giving him similarly vague-ass hints. Okay. I guess he knows now how to be charming… which begs the question: How did he survive this long being an idol if he never got a clue about that and how long have Killer King been a group? I guess they’re still fresh or something.

Anyway, the rest of Killer King pops up and Akane gives Miroku a huge ass rice ball because he hasn’t been eating well. Now that Miroku has a good idea to be charming he and the other members (THRIVE and Killer King) beg the dance instructor to put him back in, coach. Then after a practice montage with Miroku’s new found charm, we get treated to a pretty good stage performance with a mixture of 3D animation and 2D animation.

While the transitions between 2D animation of characters to 3D models isn’t exactly smooth I can see what they’re going at. They’re mainly using the 3D models to animate dance choreography which is not an easy task animating it all in 2D for a good 1 minute and 30 or so seconds. They mainly use 2D animation for extreme close ups, which at times has some awkward movement, it’s nice to see how clean it looks (as compared to those off-model shots from far away).

Choreography wise it’s pretty good, a lot of character and personality is put in as a way to fanservice the crowd (and us, the audience of the anime, of course lol). It’s not just showing simple dance routines with static pans which could get boring over time. One flaw though is that during the performance they keep cutting to scenes previously shown in the episode with the song playing over it. Like, do you all remember this scene that happened a couple of minutes ago? Well remember it now. I guess they just used that to cut costs on animating the whole performance of the song but c’mon… Feels kinda cheesey.

I kinda hope there’s more performances through this method rather than going all 2D like last season where it gave us some really good off-model shots. I’d rather see B-Pro fans get what they deserve in terms of good quality rather than my selfish need to see really good off-model shots where it doesn’t even resemble the character anymore.

The episode ends on Tsubasa congratulating everyone on a wonderful performance and then a zoom-in on her phone receiving a text from Tomo (irc) about receiving a document from Andy. I have no idea what this means but it seems like a teaser for something. I’m trying my best to remember if Andy was a dude in last season but I’m drawing a blank so maybe he was either somebody not important or a new character.

I don’t know exactly why they call this episode die hard… I guess try-hard would make more sense but upon looking it up I was confusing “die hard” with “die-hard” as in a die-hard fan.

Guess I should go back to primary school to re-learn English lol.

Anyway, this ep was ok. A bit questionable in some places and felt like it didn’t need to be an episode dedicated on it but what else are episode writers supposed to do with an idol anime that revolves around mundane stuff happening with idols? I’ll keep watching though, especially since next episode’s preview seemed a bit interesting. Looks like a slumber party or something lol. Also Tomo takes his shirt off for some raisin?

Okay.

So far the animation hasn’t fallen apart, unlike Dynamic Chord the Anime which fell apart on episode 1. There has been some awkward looking characters here and there but nothing groundbreaking lol.

Thanks for reading. Enjoy the end card of this ep! Honestly these guys are really getting butt naked for these end cards, huh.